French Fridays with Dorie: Cafe Salle Pleyel Sliders

Cooking from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours, with French Fridays with Dorie, has become Around My Coronado Patio - French Fridays with John and Denise. Many of the recipes this month have made their debut for our Friday patio soirées. It's nice having a group of friends who don't mind being guinea pigs our tasters. I don't worry about it too much, as I've come to trust Dorie's recipes. For this week's recipe, a hamburger from Cafe Salle Pieyel, I opted to make sliders.

The Cafe Salle Pieyel burger was created by Chef Sonia Ezgulian for the opening year of the Paris cafe, in the newly renovated Salle Pleyel concert hall. The burger quickly became a bestseller, and was described by the cafe's creator as having "the taste of the forbidden, the illicit - the subversive, even." The New York Times used Helene's description as the Quotation of the Day. The article, In Paris, Burgers Turn Chic, can be found here, and the original recipe, here.

So, what makes this burger so appealing? For the American, it has a sesame seed bun and dill pickles. To appease the finicky French, it has a very French seasoning blend of capers, cornichons, tarragon, and sun-dried tomatoes. It also features a red-onion marmalade and shards of Parmesan. Ketchup is rarely served, and only upon request.

Thinly sliced red onions for the onion marmalade (the original recipes uses finely chopped onions)

The French Seasoning Blend

After a few pulses in the food processor
the seasoning is mixed in with the ground chuck and/or ground sirloin

Café Salle Pleyel Sliders
Adapted from Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours
Makes 8 sliders

1 medium red onion, very thinly sliced
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon ground coriander
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup oil-packed, sun-dried tomatoes, drained and chopped
1/4 cup drained capers
6 cornichons
1/8 cup tarragon leaves
1/2 cup Italian parsley leaves
1 1/2 pounds ground sirloin, chuck or mix
2 ounces Parmesan cheese, thinly sliced with a vegetable peeler
8 dinner rolls
2 dill pickles, thinly sliced lengthwise with a vegetable peeler

1. In a medium saucepan, combine red onion with butter, coriander and 1 cup water. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until mixture is reduced, about 30-45 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, in a small food processor, pulse sun-dried tomatoes, capers, cornichons, tarragon and parsley until finely chopped.

3. In a medium bowl, lightly mix meat with sun-dried tomato mixture and season with pepper. Shape meat into 3-ounce patties, about 3/4 inch thick.

4. Heat olive oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat until just smoking. Add burgers and cook for about 2 minutes on each side for rare or 3 minutes for medium rare (I cooked our burgers on the grill). Transfer burgers to a platter and top with Parmesan. Lightly toast buns. Place some of the  onion jam on bottom buns. Place burgers on top of onion jam. Cover with top buns and serve with pickle slices on the side.

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French Fridays with Dorie is an online cooking group, dedicated to Dorie Greenspan‘s newest book Around My French Table: More Than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours.  As members of the group, we have purchased the cookbook and cook along as much as we can. There is a new recipe each week, and we post about that recipe on Friday. We are asked to refrain from posting the actual recipes on our blog. The book is filled with stunning photography, and personal stories about each recipe, which makes it that much more intriguing. I highly recommend adding it to your cookbook collection if you haven't already!